Social media and that woman in the village

By Eric Kalunga

Before deploying any new technology the people at Twaweza, a development NGO in Tanzania, ask themselves what would a forty-year old woman in Sumbawanga think about it. If they can’t envision her making use of it then they go back to the drawing board . This is a smart procedure since more than half the people in Tanzania share the characteristics of that forty year old: lives in a village and without money.

According to Wikipedia , social media is ‘...the the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue’.  Social media has a lot of applications in many settings but for development work it has been used primarily to collect information, inform people and mobilize them to take action in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and many other places where such work is carried out.

Like any other development initiative then, social media has to adapt to the settings that it is applied to. For instance is it possible to organise mass movements that have been sprouting in places like Egypt, Tunisia, England and now the US, in Tanzania, using twitter and facebook? Statistics suggest otherwise. Figures  show that 36 percent of people in Tunisia have access to internet, 26 percent in Egypt and it is 11 percent for Tanzania. When you factor in the Occupy movement in United States you find a country where 78 percent of the population have access to the internet . A graph for this data would then show a positive correlationship between the number of people with access to the internet and the occurence of social media organised mass movements. The less people there are with access to the internet the less likely it is that an idea spread entirely through social media will turn into a mass movement.

So what does this mean? This means going back to that forty year old woman in Sumbawanga and asking what is the best way to reach her in her environment? Research shows that an sms might be the best way to reach her since about 46 percent of people in Tanzania are mobile cellular telephone subscribers . That is about one in two people. A report exploring prospects for e-advocacy in Africa  finds ‘...the digital divide is felt most acutely in ... Africa. While mobile phone penetration is growing rapidly even in this region, the promise of the internet and other ICTs is dimmed by regressive telecommunications  policies  and  poor  infrastructure’ (p.4).  If one is to use social media to incite change within this context then the sms is the best choice.

However all is not well with the mobile phone either, especially here in Tanzania. A look at the bigger picture reveals that national coverage of eletrification stands at 14 percent of households as of 2009 with 80 percent of these households in urban areas. Also about 27 percent of all adults are illiterate.  A survey aiming at measuring basic literacy and numeracy skills of primary school children found that only three in ten standard three pupils could read a basic Kiswahili story. So , while it is likely that the forty year old woman in the village will own a mobile phone it is also likely that she has no power at home to keep the phone charged and also that neither she nor her child can read that sms you sent encouraging her to go vote. Or, since she lives on less than one dollar a day, won’t be able to top up her phone and text whether her local government involved her in budgeting.

Social media, and ICTs in general, do not exist in an isolated bubble unaffected by other social realities. To launch an effective social media campaign one must consider the complex interplay of factors within the particular setting where change is desired. The method, or platform used, must take account of realities such as illiteracy, low incomes and limited access to internet and power. This article does not to argue that social media initiated change is not possible in Tanzania and other countries like it but rather it suggests that the conditions necessary for such kind of change might not yet be complete. For the moment, social media cannot avoid coexisting with old media to be effective. ‘Radio is still king’, said Rakesh Rajan, founder of Twaweza, when speaking at a recent technology summit. Yes, that woman in the village who sits by the flickering light of the kerosene lamp at night and who might hold a newspaper upside down is likely to be listening to the small battery powered radio in the house. And she just might hear you.